


I'm just like everyone else (fucked up like everyone else)

by Ratterer



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Jaskier | Dandelion-centric, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Sad with a Happy Ending, but ticked both just to be safe, not sure whether its actually mature or graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:33:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23461039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ratterer/pseuds/Ratterer
Summary: The knowledge that you are dying. The certainty that, this time, you cannot be saved.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 7
Kudos: 139





	I'm just like everyone else (fucked up like everyone else)

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work for this fandom, bit edgy but that's what quarantine does whoops  
> Hope it's okay! Title is taken from I'm Not Ok by Weathers.  
> Edited to fix some minor tense discrepancies.

_“Jaskier?”_

There’s a kind of distant humour about it, he thinks; the bard, with his triumphant tales of vanquished beasts and captured hearts, dying with such little ceremony. He has done _his_ part, at least, curling his body away from his lute so the blood won’t soak into the strings. There is nothing worse than a lute with tacky strings, he’s always said - or, perhaps not always. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that there was a time _before_. That lull in time that existed between leaving his house and finding his home. When your home is at a witcher’s side, certain unpleasant possibilities become inevitabilities… the stray blood on your lute, the grime coating the strings.

The knowledge that you are dying. The certainty that, this time, you cannot be saved.

_“Fuck, Jaskier!”_

It was under Jaskier’s voice that they met, and under Geralt’s that they would never meet again; he is certain that the only reason he’s still conscious is that Destiny wanted _someone_ to appreciate the chiastic beauty of the thing, and Geralt sure as hell wouldn’t. Witchers are made, but poets are born, and Jaskier has yet to find evidence of the theoretical overlap. Maybe whatever it is they do to create the Witcher, kills the poet. Or maybe it is the poet that kills the Witcher. Either their coexistence was an anomaly; that it would end this way was inevitable. (After all, the alternative - Geralt, slain, snow-white hair turned red as blood, empty eyes black as ebony - did not bear consideration). Better it end with him.

_“He’s breathing; gods, how is he breathing?”_

Better it end _now_. Jaskier knows he is beautiful; he has it on good authority, in fact, from the words shaped by countless lips, men and women, whispers and shouts, one-night-stands and long-term lovers. He remembers, with a shiver, the night he first bed Geralt: those golden eyes and their full-blown pupils fixed on him, like his was the only body and the only soul he’d ever known- ever wanted to know. Yet he equally knows his beauty is fleeting. He does not doubt the depth of Geralt’s feeling, the truth of those murmured words Jaskier has to press against his chest to hear - he cannot, will not do him this disservice. But his mortal lifespan is the blink of an eye to a Witcher, and in Geralt’s radiance he already feels his skin and mind shrivel, his hair and reflexes dull. If there must be a time when all he is is a fading memory, then this is not the memory he would choose, but it is, perhaps, better than being a decrepit old man who is more help than hindrance. (Better still than being no memory at all.)

_“I know. I’m sorry. Just– fix him. Please.”_

It’s only when the pain returns that the fear does, too. He cannot see, he cannot breathe, he cannot _think_ for this agony. It pierces and it burns, it rends his very flesh from his bones, it oozes from his pores and gushes from his mouth. His mind is: _gods i cant do this i dont want to die i dont want to die please i dont want this i dont want this i dont._

His body lets go.

_“It’s over.”_

When he was small, he used to dream of falling. Almost every night, that sudden weightlessness would grip him and he would hang, suspended, just for a moment, above the world. And in that moment, he was filled with awe at the sublime beauty of all that lay below him, of all the wonders of the land that lay unnoticed beneath his feet. Then, the fear. And the falling. He would wake with a cry, and maybe his mother or his sister would stroke his hair, or maybe the heat of the fire would dry his tears, and he would know he was okay.

Now, there is no mother, or sister, or fire. But there are hands, abrasive and kind, and a voice, rough and unpracticed.

_“Come on, Jaskier. Wake up.”_

And maybe, this is enough.

(Seconds, or minutes, or hours later, his eyes will flutter awake. And he will listen to Geralt’s disapproving hum, and bear his chastisements at him straying too close to the fight, and ignore the tear tracks on his face. Jaskier knows that this will happen again, and again, until suddenly it doesn’t. Knows that if he had died today, or if he left tomorrow, he could save them both another heartbreak. But Jaskier is selfish, or foolish, or perhaps even neither, and he stays by the Witcher’s side, for as long as he can.

 _“Is it destiny, little bard?”_ Yennefer will needle, with Jaskier awake enough that Geralt might sleep. _“Is that what keeps you by his side, day in and day out, bloody and begging like some deranged terrier?”_

It is not destiny. It is not fear, or poetic duty, or his natural penchant for being an irritant. It is a single word, four letters long, too potent to ever let fall into the witch’s hands. So instead, he replies simply, and not entirely untruthfully:

_“It’s his giant Witcher co-”_

With a flick of her hand, he will fade mercifully back into the abyss.)

**Author's Note:**

> I am incapable of taking myself seriously for a full 900 words and I'm very sorry  
> Please leave a comment if you liked it, or have any feedback! Thanks for reading :)


End file.
